U-CF School District backs off right-to-know challenge

01/15/2019 01:25PM
● By J. Chambless

By
JP PhillipsCorrespondent

During
their Dec. 3 meeting, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School Board voted
to contest a recent decision by the Pennsylvania Office of Open
Records (OOR) that allowed part of local resident Mark Stookey’s
Right-To-Know information request to move forward.

During the Jan.
14 board work session, the district changed course and announced that
it will not dispute the decision. Board president Jeff Hellrung
explained the board’s reversal.

“At our December meeting,
this board -- relying on the advice of our attorney -- voted to
appeal an Office of Open Records decision,” Hellrung said. “After
conducting additional due diligence and prior to filing the appeal,
our attorney advised us to forego the appeal and produce the
requested documents. While still believing that the district has a
strong case, he did not want us to undergo a lengthy and expensive
appeal process and take on the risk that our appeal could be
unsuccessful.

“I’m hopeful that the release of these documents
has discredited any accusations that the district is hiding
information or behaving inappropriately in any way in regards to our
Long-Range Facilities Plan,” he continued. “I can only hope that
our administration will now be able to move on from this costly and
time-consuming distraction and redirect their energy where it matters
most -- our students.”

Pennsylvania’s Right-To-Know law states
that all government agency records are public information, with a few
exceptions. These exceptions are generally designed to protect
confidential information, investigations, or the public should the
release of data compromise safety.

The Chester County Press
sat down with Stookey to better understand the concerns that led to
three Right-to-Know requests concerning the Outdoor Facilities Plan.
Stookey became concerned last June when the school district’s
consultant, K&S, presented an Outdoor Facilities proposal. K&S
estimated that the plan, if fully implemented, would cost taxpayers
an estimated $10 million over the next ten years. It included such
items as artificial turf fields, new tennis courts, redesigned
roadways, a new field house, an outdoor classroom and walking trails.
Over the next several months, the board made it clear that each item
in the plan would be individually considered and they would
incorporate all, some, or none of the items into the district’s
Long-Range Plan.

Stookey did not think the information presented
at public meetings was enough to justify the cost of these projects.
He was also concerned that the extra wear-and-tear from facilities
usage by outside groups – especially on the sports fields – was
the reason for some of the priciest items.

Based on a January
2018 resident survey distributed and analyzed by the district,
roughly half of respondents thought that the current outdoor
facilities were adequate. It also showed that outside groups
accounted for 66 percent of the usage on fields deemed “overused.”

Over the next few months, Stookey filed three Right-to-Know
requests related to the outdoor facilities project. According to
Stookey, the district provided a small part of one request, fully
denied another request, and did not respond to the third. Stookey
subsequently filed three appeals with the Office of Open Records.
Eventually, it took five months from his initial request, but he is
satisfied that the district provided most records. He claimed he has
not received all records listed in his other two requests.

“The
project is the big thing that got me going,” Stookey said,
referring to the Outdoor Facilities Plan. “I was worried about $10
million without justification. We’ve made huge progress by making
people take a much harder look at the project, and it’s down to
much more reasonable levels. There’re still questions about what it
really ought to be, but the whole freight train has been slowed down
and we are in a much, much better place. But in the process of doing
this and trying to understand the project, what I found was a very
unacceptable situation in the district’s implementation of the
Right-To-Know law. And frankly, that’s something that needs to be
changed.

“One thing they could do is communicate better if
something does become too difficult; they don’t do that. Secondly,
they need to organize their records in a way that they can be
accessed.”The district’s Communications Coordinator, Christa
Fazio, explained some of the district’s challenges in an email. She
said Stookey submitted a total of seven requests since July 2018. All
totaled, these requests had 169 questions to be answered. In
response, the district provided approximately 25,000 pages to
Stookey.

Fazio also said the district made great efforts to
communicate and meet with Stookey to no avail. District
superintendent John Sanville extended invitations for Stookey to
meet, both via email and at public meetings. Hellrung has met with
Stookey once and offered to meet regularly to keep him apprised of
school district business.

Stookey said that, based on documents he
has seen, there are outside for-profit groups that do not always pay
to use school district facilities. It also does not appear that all
non-profit groups make donations. He feels that the district policy
regarding charging outside groups, policy 707, should be either
changed or followed.

The district’s statement said that in the
fall of 2018, the policy and fee schedule were reviewed and they
determined it was not followed as written. “While it is
well-documented that we have collected tens of thousands of dollars
in usage and impact fees from outside groups – far exceeding any
charges incurred – our financial systems are not equipped to
implement 707AG as currently composed,” the statement read.
“Administration recommends a full revision of 707AG (facility use
schedule) for both ease of use and record keeping.”

In the
meantime, Stookey soldiers on. He said he has spent countless hours
and more than $10,000 in legal fees to pursue his RTK requests.

He
felt it was his civic responsibility to ask questions. “This is
exactly why we have a Right-To-Know law,” he said. “This is the
exact reason why they [district administration] need to produce these
records. This is our money. They have no right to say that you can’t
see the way your money is spent.”